Game Cover

Platform played on: Xbox One (One X Enhanced)

# Review

This is yet another game going offline and this time it’s another battle royale that’s biting the dust. Realm Royale was originally a spin-off from Paladins, a free-to-play multiplayer shooter, but eventually developed into its own thing. Realm Royale feels like a medieval version of Fortnite and like Fortnite, the goal is to battle other players until the player is the last one left standing.

Medieval Fortnite

Perhaps it’s not perfectly fair to claim that Realm Royale is a direct copy of Fornite but the two games are definitely very similar, down to the graphics and the menu UI. There are some major differences in the gameplay loop, though. For instance, Realm Royale doesn’t have the construction mechanic of Fortnite and in its place, has a crafting mechanic where players can collect resources to build weapons, abilities, and armour. Speaking of abilities, Realm Royale features different classes a user can select and each class has distinct abilities which can be used to gain an edge in engagements. These two changes means that Realm Royale is much more skill-based than Fortnite as there’s often a strategic aspect to building your character and one doesn’t have to rely as much on luck to progress one’s character in each match.

Chicken mechanic

Realm Royale also features mounts which can be ridden to travel across the map quickly as well as a chicken mechanic, where the player turns into a chicken after being downed and can be auto-revived after a period of time. Overall Realm Royale does feel very generic today but upon release, it must’ve been a viable competitor against Fortnite. I do think the bad management by Hi-Rez, the developer and publisher of Realm Royale, killed the once-successful game. The player base was destroyed by the complete lack of investment into new content and marketing, coupled with really bad decisions that ruined the balance of the game, such as making the game less skill-based (the game’s main differentiating feature against Fortnite). The servers were also terrible as more often than not, one would get booted from the match and would have to restart the entire game to get into another match.

# Conclusion

Another game with potential ruined by Hi-Rez.

# Overall rating: 6.7

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